November 23rd

It was impossible for Hermione to think about anything other than her bizarre interaction with Gemma. After Rodolphus left the house she was alone for the rest of the day and night. Her host had more important business to attend to in London than staying behind to make sure his guest didn't get bored. She wanted to know what sort of business he had, but knew he likely wouldn't tell her the truth if she asked. Very few bothered those days.

Gemma's words played on a loop in her mind over and over again. She struggled to make any sort of sense out of them. The remark she made about Rodolphus being able to use any body he wished struck her as particularly strange. Use a body for what? Sex? Mind control? She didn't understand. All of the options were sinister and terrifying. Perhaps she'd simply read too many salacious novels over the course of her lifetime. Life as a Death Eater taught her that people could be cruel, but there was a limit to their abilities. Magic existing didn't suddenly mean anything and everything was possible.

Rodolphus didn't return until she was already tucked into bed. Hearing his footsteps pause outside her closed door put her on edge. Was he ready to try again after his failure a few nights earlier? She didn't relax until she heard his footsteps move away from her door. The sound of his bedroom door door opening and then closing was a hopeful indicator that he planned to leave her alone for the night. Unfortunately that tiny bit of security didn't mean she was able to fall immediately asleep. Likely she would have trouble resting in that horrible house for as long as she was there.

By the time Hermione woke up last the next morning, she'd come up with the only plausible explanation for Gemma's ramblings. The woman had too much time on her hands. Only one of her four children still remained at home for her to fuss over and it was painfully evident that her husband didn't have much use for her. That was likely why she'd been hounding Rabastan months earlier to have another baby. She was bored. Lacking any sense of purpose could leave a person open to listening to any sort of insane conspiracy theories. Or even worse, making up more of her own. The most likely scenario was she'd overheard bits and pieces of conversations that she'd tried to make some sort of logical sense over. Boredom could get a person in a lot of trouble if they weren't careful.

Hermione knew she might very well be wrong, but she made the decision to ignore Gemma. Enough was going on that she didn't need to go looking for problems. Gemma hated the very ground she walked on. It was entirely possible that she just wanted to upset her, drive her crazy with a false story. Hermione had to keep on with her plan of uncovering the truth from Rodolphus himself.

"You seem awfully far away, my dear. Is everything all right?"

Rodolphus' voice broke Hermione out of her thoughts. They were both seated at the dining table enjoying a delicious lunch. Or rather, he was enjoying the meal. She was mostly just pushing her food around from one side of her plate to the other. It was a terrible habit she'd managed to teach her son. When he didn't care for the food he was provided, Oliver would curl up his lip and push his food around too.

"I'm sorry. I was thinking about my son. I'm a little worried about him."

It was a believable lie because it was entirely based in fact. Every single second of the day she worried about her son. She hoped that he was all right in the castle. If he tried to send her an owl, she worried that either he wouldn't know where to send it or Rodolphus might intercept it before she received it. At the mention of Oliver, Rodolphus grew noticeably chilly. He had never been a fan of any children at all, only giving the minimum amount of attention to his nieces and nephews required to be less than an ogre. The fact that he had never been able to have children didn't bring him the least bit of sorrow. Oliver was not a subject the wizard cared to be reminded of.

"You've never been concerned so much about him in the past."

"Yes, that's true, but a lot has changed."

It seemed like the perfect opening to bring up the topic of the charms he cast on her mind. At some point, she would need to confront him about his treachery. What he did to her was unconscionable, unforgivable. How could he even begin to justify his actions? She refused to allow him to try to convince her that she'd gone mad and imagined he did something he didn't. Gaslighting wouldn't work again.

Rodolphus rose to his feet abruptly, cutting off any chance she had to further their conversation down that path. Without any excuse or explanation at all, he stormed out of his own house again. Living in such close proximity to him and seeing him every day meant she'd been able to see how altered he'd become. Usually he was able to compose himself better, to project an image of a powerful man who had it all under control. Hermione could see that he wasn't a well man. The cracks in his façade were only growing bigger.

No longer the least bit hungry and not having to pretend otherwise for a concerned audience, she abandoned her partially eaten lunch. Grabbing her cloak off a hook on the wall next to the front door, she bundled up for a walk in the cold. Physical exertion would hopefully help her to clam down and clear her mind of its stresses. Spending another day cooped up inside the Dower House alone with her thoughts sounded like torture.

The grounds of the Lestrange Estate were nothing less than impressive. Sprawling and sculpted, even in the coldest parts of the year there was still beauty to behold. Rodolphus claimed that his father loved his gardens more than anything else in the world, including his own sons. By all accounts he sounded like a bitter, lonely, awful man. But at least he'd built an excellent garden to be proud of.

She'd learned days earlier when she was tired of being inside that the gardens made for a pleasant, long walk. Being alone with her thoughts while she moved helped her to sort what was important from what was just noise. Whether her mind was getting sharper or her mental deterioration continued wasn't easy to determine. One moment she would feel just like her old self and then the next she was back to forgetting why she was doing what she was doing. Deep down she was afraid to discover the truth.

Rodolphus was up to something awful when it came to her. That was all that she was certain of. Until she uncovered the reasons why he manipulated her mind, she didn't think she would ever be able to rest easy again. There would always be that lingering fear that something would trigger a change she had no control over. She'd learned enough about mind control to know that it wasn't a crazy science fiction that should just be ignored. If Rodolphus somehow implanted a spell inside her brain that could activate something, she would never feel like her nightmare was over.

Her stroll through the gardens was actually quite lovely until she turned a corner near the intricate hedge maze to come face to face with Gemma. Neither woman was pleased with the unexpected encounter. They each loathed the very sight of each other. It was quite pathetic really. There might have been an opportunity for them to allies, but that would never happen.

"Am I not free to even get a breath of fresh air without fear of running into you?"

Hermione wasn't going to let the odious woman think that she had an advantage over her in the slightest. A bright, sarcastic smile was her only response. Gemma scowled, the fine lines on her face showing prominently again. Had she aged even in just the short time since she slammed her head against the wall and threatened her children if any harm came to Oliver? The stress of their current existence wasn't doing anyone any favors. Soon they would all be haggard, unrecognizable messes.

"What did you mean yesterday? When you said that Rodolphus didn't really want me?"

Amused once more that she knew something Hermione didn't, some of Gemma's anger melted away. She even took a step towards the other witch, ready to gloat even more about what she knew. Hermione didn't care what she did as long as she was able to walk away with a better understanding of that bizarre exchange. As much as she tried to convince herself that all she said was foolish nonsense, she couldn't afford to just write her off just yet. If she didn't like how she answered her next few questions, she wouldn't speak to the bitch again.

"It must be killing you to not know something, isn't it? What did Professor Snape used to call you? A little Know-It-All?"

"Yes, Gemma. Very amusing. Ha-ha. Just tell me."

"Rodolphus wants to bring his wife back from the dead."

Whatever she was expecting Gemma to say, it wasn't that. Hermione wasn't sure that she heard it correctly the first time and asked her to repeat herself. Gemma did so gleefully, enjoying her moment. How could this possibly affect Hermione in any way? There was a branch of magic that ninety-nine percent of the magical population wanted to forget even existed. Necromancy was nothing to fool around with by the casual or even experienced practitioner of magic. Though most who dared only focused on the part of the magic that simply allowed them to communicate with the dead, there had been others in history that had gone further. It was illegal to practice in every country in the world for very valid reasons. What could Gemma possibly mean?

"He's been studying how to do it for years. Probably since she died. Rabastan says that he thinks he's finally figured out how to do it."

She was fascinated by the idea if terrified at the same time. Old magicks had to be used. It was incredibly dangerous to tap into power that was so ancient and dark. Once she stumbled on a book that had been confiscated in a raid by the Ministry of one of the Dark Lord's suspected enemies. Truthfully, it was just a doddering old fool who had an impressive collection of texts and artifacts that didn't appreciate the Ministry of Magic sticking its nose into his private affairs. The old man had been thrown in a cell to await a trial that never happened. He'd died of an apparent heart attack only days later. Many of the old ones died before their trials. Hermione had the chance to look at some of the evidence that had been gathered. One of the books was darker than anything she'd ever read. If she'd flipped through it and found out how to make a horcrux, she wouldn't have been surprised. The few descriptions she read about the process of bringing the dead back to life filled her with dread and haunted her dreams for months.

"How?"

"Well…"

Gemma's eyes widened just as a green stream of energy slammed into her chest. Eerily reminiscent of the day she was with Hannah when she was murdered, Hermione was half-convinced at first that she'd lost her mind and was hallucinating. Only when Gemma's lifeless body crashed to the frozen ground did she understand it was real. She spun around to see the culprit. Rodolphus' face was angrier than she'd seen it in a very long time. He spat on his sister-in-law's corpse.

"Meddlesome bitch! She never did know how to keep her mouth shut."